Tweet This

Movies about the Bible are as old as the film industry itself. Cecil B. DeMille, the original blockbuster director, made The Ten Commandments in 1923 follow by movies like The King of Kings and Samson and Delilah. But for the past few decades, Bible movies have been mostly on the fringes of Hollywood. Movies like The Passion of the Christ or the more recent Son of God were not what you would call tent pole movies.

That all changes this weekend. Paramount's Noah is opening big in 3,500 theaters across the country, including
Imax theaters. The movie tells the old story of Noah and his ark but puts it in a modern, disaster movie context. Expect huge floods, grisly deaths and an ax-wielding Russell Crowe as Noah. The movie cost a reported $125 million to produce.

Exhibitor Relations expects the film will top the box office with $41 million. That would give Noah the fourth-best opening of any film this year. That's not a superhero movie level opening but it would be a pretty good showing and the movie has already earned $22 million overseas.

Hot on Noah's heels is Exodus from director Ridley Scott. That film hits theaters this Christmas and stars Christian Bale as Moses. From Twentieth Century
Fox, Exodus will be another big-budget, effects-heavy take on a Bible story.

If both films are hits, expect to see plenty more Bible movies in the coming years.

It looks like the Bible is set to become Hollywood's latest franchise. The book meets all of Tinseltown's requirements for a franchise. It's a best seller (the best seller actually), it's chock full of great dramatic stories that people feel passionately about and it can spawn lots of different movies. The fact that the Bible is in the public domain means that no one studio can corner the market on Bible movies but there also aren't any pesky authors to negotiate rights with.

Plus the films guarantee plenty of controversy. Several religious groups have complained that Noah deviates too much from the Biblical tale and portrays Noah as too dark and conflicted. To try and appease religious viewers (who have helped make small movies like Son of God and God is not Dead profitable hits) Paramount cut together an 86-minute version of the film that cut out a lot of the controversial elements and ended with an uplifting Christian song, according to a profile of director Darren Aronofsky in the New Yorker. But that version didn't test any better than Aronosfky's so the studio decided to go with the darker version of the story.

While this kind of news might scare away hard-core Christians, it gets people talking about the movie and that ultimately helps the film. Expect similar controversies to spring up around Exodus but don't believe that the big studios were ever really nervous. In the case of Noah, Aronosfky has made nothing but dark, conflicted films from his debut, Pi, to his biggest hit, Black Swan. Paramount certainly knew what kind of film it was going to get when it signed on for the project.